


Casting Stones

by Moonshine_Givens



Series: Midnight Cowboy [2]
Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Attempted Rape, Hooker AU, M/M, None of our boys die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 04:11:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonshine_Givens/pseuds/Moonshine_Givens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raylan has to deal with the worst kind of client and with Boyd's new found faith.</p><p>Part two on the Hooker AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Casting Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, gunslingers! Some people requested a continuation for our Hooker AU, so here we are. I quite like "Midnight Cowboy"'s ending, and I see it as a stand-alone work, but I got intrigued about what else we could explore with Raylan as a prostitute. So, if this part two is much more lame than part one, please forgive me: I did my best. I'm still brazilian and still not perfect with my English. Hope you enjoy it!  
> Oh, and for the whole experience, listen to You'll never leave Harlan alive at the end - I wrote this whole fic with it playing, but I think it's the perfect song to our ending.

Raylan loves to top. First of all, you’ll excuse us for such a vulgar beginning, talking about sex before even saying good morning. It’s just a little excusable, since that’s how most of Raylan’s clients think they should address a hooker. Raylan will often say you don’t start talking about your shit’s smell before you proper introduce yourself to your plumber, there’s no reason to start talking about your come’s taste before you have a drink with your prostitute.

Some clients are just too eager, you see? This is a job like any other else.

As we were saying, Raylan loves to top. Is not that he doesn’t like to bottom; it’s not that – if he didn’t like to bottom, he wouldn’t choose this job, after all. You may say he didn’t exactly chose this job (the hooker life chose him, haha¸ hilarious), it was, after all, one of the few things he could do so he wouldn’t starve, once he was in New York. Back then he was just a Harlan kid, with no talent or knowledge whatsoever that didn’t involve mining or pining for his best friend, the few dollars Helen gave him slowly disappearing from his pocket. She was a good woman, Helen, but those were tough times and those dollars were everything she had to offer.

But Raylan won’t blame those last twenty years spent turning tricks on these few desperate first months in New York. Sure, he was hungry and he didn’t know what else to do, that first time he sucked cock in an empty alley, but that alone wasn’t reason to stay in business all this time. No, Raylan knows damn well he could have stopped at some point; make it to college, who knows? Done something else with his life. Maybe he would be in one of those jobs, a plumber, or doorman or… an undertaker. One of those jobs richer people doesn’t even think about it, but those are good jobs as well, fine and decent. Or maybe he would be a police officer, arresting hookers and shooting bad guys, a lawman. Everything is possible, right?

No, the reason Raylan stayed was because he didn’t think he was going to be good at something else. Raylan had this thing about him: this tendency to define himself through his job. When he was down the mine, he was a miner, one of those desperate men searching for the mountain’s soul, waiting for death and sickness: he didn’t like to be that person, and that’s why he had to leave. In New York, those first years, he was a hooker, all charm and sex and business transaction, no bullshit, no romance: just money and seduction. And that wasn’t bad to him. Just like the hat, he tried someday, and it fit, so he never took it off.

He sometimes wonders if any other job would have fit, maybe fit better. He thinks maybe he can now be someone else, the guy behind the bar with a shot gun and a half empty bottle of Jim Beam. He sees himself getting old that way, his hair getting even grayer, deep age marks around his eyes and a small smile on his face. Every once in a while an old client would come across the bar, thinks he recognize that face, but the guy behind the counter would be a whole different person. Raylan thinks.

That being said, being a bottom fits Raylan just fine. He likes getting fucked, the feel of being full, his pleasure at the mercy of the john. ( _I like this_ , he tells himself through gritted teeth). But he likes being a top even better: that way, he feels like he can prove his real market value. As far as Raylan can tell, anyone can be a hole to get fucked, that’s the easy way of having sex, you can move a bit and try to keep it up, but unless you’re on top, let’s face it: more than half the job is just taking it. Moaning a bit, maybe, if the client is into that. After a while, half the clients won’t even tell the difference if you’re moaning or singing “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”, the Elton John version.

Raylan feels he’s being fair to what he earns when he’s sucking cock or being a top. He knows how to fuck, knows how to make any guy with some light questions about his own heterosexuality screams he wants more cock. He’s good at that; he knows how to do it, fast and hard or slow and tender: Raylan is good at fucking.

Raylan would very much love to show how good at fucking he is at this jackass Wynn Duffy.

Because the thing is, some clients just don’t know how to fuck. They confuse a hard fuck with hurting the sex-worker, and those are not the same thing at all. Some guys ( _don’t think Boyd, don’t think Boyd, goddamitt_ ) they know exactly the difference. Of course, he felt pain at Boyd’s hard, fast hammering ( _what did I just tell you?_ ), but that was the good kind of pain, the pain that puts you on edge and that you cannot difference from the pleasure. They call coming the “small death” in French for a reason. Raylan is a hooker, he can take a hard fuck, and he welcomes it when it’s a nice one, like the one… some of his clients were able to perform.

Right.

And then there are those assholes who just don’t know how to fuck without being vicious, without aiming for the worst angle and most painful way of stabbing the guy. No pleasure at all. Some of them, of course, are those sad stories of guys who just don’t know what to do with their dicks. That’s why they need hookers, after all.

And some of them are the really special snowflakes who think that because they are paying they can just as well do as they please: hurt and bruise and break that thing with a hole, see how far they can take it. More often than not, those are the guys standing with a bloody knife over some hooker’s body.

Raylan has the bad feeling Wynn Duffy is the second type of shitty client. As he fucks Raylan into the mattress, ass in the air and arms being hold behind his back, face against a pillow, Duffy’s not dumb – he’s dangerous. He goes and he goes and he goes, moving without grace and without pleasure, a torture of sorts. One painful stab makes Raylan hit the headboard, and for fucks sake, this guy’s cock is not even half Boyd’s size.

( _…you have to stop that, Raylan, it’s been a month, you have to stop otherwise this won’t ever work again._ He’s trying to follow his own advice, but it’s getting harder. _You knew that was a bad idea, but now you have to forget it, ‘cause he was just another john. Now Boyd is off to some other craziness and you’re stuck with fucking Wynn Duffy._ )

Raylan can feel Duffy’s friend’s eyes on him. For once he’s glad he’s in this position – his face against the pillow means he doesn’t have to maintain eye contact with that blue eyed snake. He doesn’t know what the hell is making him so distrustful about this guy. At first he thought it was just he was tired of Duffy’s bullshit from the first time around, and everything the guy did or said today was getting on his nerves pretty easy. But then he looked long and hard to the blond guy’s fake smile, and he could see clear as day that the guy had his own level of creepiness that was making him uneasy without even trying.

Raylan ended up charging a whole lot more just to allow the blond guy in the room to watch, thinking they would back off from the price. Not his luck, of course, since Duffy and the guy were apparently celebrating something, some money the mafia was making in Harlan County, it seems.

And what was it with him fucking all the damn criminals in this side of Kentucky? You’d think some nice judge would want a male prostitute every now and again, but it seems he’s stuck with the wrong side of the law. Fuck.

So the blond guy is now watching as Duffy tries to aim his dick at Raylan’s internal organs, it seems. Fucking blondes. Duffy’s hand is suddenly on Raylan’s neck, first just a light pressure, and then he’s putting strength on it, making Raylan choke and suffocate on the pillow.

Great. Duffy is that kind of charming man that will yell at the cashier for twenty minutes because he can’t find his favorite cereal.

Raylan thinks about what to do right now. He knows he can kick Duffy from him and beat the little shit ‘till he’s a bloody pulp on the floor, and that would be so pleasurable. But he also knows he can take this, that Duffy is close and that it will all end soon. Besides, if he can take it, he has a way out.

…and there, Duffy is making a ugly sound and fucking deep inside him, as deep as his average-to-small dick can take him.

Raylan gets up easily enough, if anything to prove to Duffy that he could have get off of his hold any time he wanted. The blond guy is still there, sitting in a chair by the foot of the bed, eating Raylan’s naked body with his eyes. He’s still all dressed and composed, not even a finger towards his own cock. Raylan can tell he’s hard, but he wishes he couldn’t, just thinking about it is making him sick.

Raylan walks calmly towards his own clothes, dresses (he’ll bother showering at home, he’s sick and tired of those faces) and takes his wallet off the back pocket. Duffy’s still lying boneless on the bed.

“Mister Duffy, since this part of our business is over; I think we should address some money issues.”

“What? I already paid you, didn’t I?”

“Well, this is quite the opposite. I would very much like if you could take this money, it’s half today’s price.”

“What? I’m such a good fuck you don’t wanna charge?” they were both laughing now, and Raylan feels he could punch them both and be a happy man.

“Your sex abilities notwithstanding, I’ll return half of today’s charge as restitution for future problems the services of my company may cause you. Sir.”

“Well, Givens, what problems would that be?”

“We won’t be doing any services with you any longer.”

That got Duffy’s attention. The man was out of the bed and in Raylan’s face in less than a second, and why did he have such luck to attract nutjobs?

“And why is that, Givens? My money is not good enough for a precious bitch like you?”

Raylan sighed. Nutjobs, always. “Mister Duffy, you’ll agree with me that that thing you pulled tonight? Wasn’t part of our agreement. You want to play those types of games; we have professionals who’ll be happy do to it, for the right price. I ain’t one of them. Now take the damn money and have a nice life, good luck findin’ another male escort service in the south-eastern Kentucky area.”

“Now Givens, you don’t know what kind of dangerous game you’re playing here. Maybe I’ll stop by your house and we can continue this conversation.”

“Well, that’s your fucking problem: I ain’t playin’ no more. You make any threats and the next time we have a conversation, _it won’t be a conversation_. Take. The. Money.”

Raylan could see with the corner of his eye that the blond snake wasn’t moving. The moment he got up, Raylan was out of this room, be it in a peace manner or a “punch-the-fuckers” manner. Both would be just fine.

“I won’t take the money, Raylan!”

“Fine.” Raylan sighed, put on his hat and the money back in the wallet. “I’ll just buy myself some ice cream, then. You have a nice evenin’.”

Raylan was halfway across the room when the creep blond was up in a fluid motion, blocking his pat. Raylan forced himself to stop and not just shove the guy off, because he was a damn nice professional and Art would already be mad.

“You should think about the way you do business, Raylan Givens.”

“Well, luckily, you ain’t my pimp. _Get out of the way_.”

The man smile didn’t reach his eyes. Raylan thinks he’ll write a scientific essay about how Kentucky, and especially Harlan County, has a certain gravity pull that works only in a particular brand of fucked up maniacs. He’ll wonder why the hell he always ends up in Harlan himself another time.

Duffy’s friend finally gets the clue that Raylan isn’t fucking playing, and steps away. Raylan is out on the night air in 0.3 seconds, already itching to get inside a shower.

*****

“Well, if it ain’t my good friend Raylan Givens!” Boyd stood on the center of the camp, many men surrounding him, Bibles and guns all around, a preacher of the violence. “We don’t have us no saints in this church, but if we ever had any, Raylan Givens would be the first!”

“More like Mary Magdalene, really.” Raylan answered, shaking Boyd’s hand and returning the man’s wide smile.

“Ain’t no one without sin here today, Raylan.”

“Glad to know you’re not in the business of casting stones. Can I talk to you for a minute, Boyd? In private?”

They walk around the woods, getting themselves apart from the other men. Raylan looks hard at Boyd, trying to figure what was the lie his mouth would be telling today. Half trues and sweet lies, that’s the Crowder’s way, through and through. Strangely, it seems so much harder to understand him now, to see under his mask, as they walk towards a creek, boots buried deep into the woods dirt. Boyd’s eyes are borrowing the green from the leafs around, and he has the mannerism of a Sunday preacher. Raylan can’t tell his lies any longer.

“Have you ever consider, Raylan, that I might be telling God’s honest true?” Boyd asks, a hand over his heart and his eyes on Raylan’s, as if he can read the man’s thoughts.

God’s honest true is not for Harlan, Raylan wants to answer. Not for us.

“What? Less than a month after I find you wavin’ a nazi flag and we fuck in your brother’s dining room you’re suddenly a born-again Christian, Boyd? Repentin’ from all your sins?”

“All but one, Raylan.” Boyd smile is such a pure one, you wouldn’t believe the shit the man has pulled in his life. “I can’t bring myself to ever regret being with you… ‘suppose that’ll be my downfall.”

Raylan had to laugh at that, even if it was just a bitter laugh. Boyd had such a love for dramatics.

“You sure have a way with words, Boyd, if you got all those men hooked on your latest con.”

“You know, someday I’ll explain to you exactly why this isn’t a con, my friend. Some beautiful day I’ll sit by this same creek and I’ll tell you how God saved my soul. When you’re ready to know.” Boyd isn’t touching, isn’t leaning, he’s standing three feet away with his hands on his pockets. He doesn’t look like danger or lust – he’s not hellfire anymore, Raylan suddenly understands. He’s still burning, because Boyd can’t be without burning, but he’s now the fire in the bushes, he’s the flame of the candles.

He’s the fire who burned down Sodom.

“Don’t suppose you’ll try to bring me to the righteous pat?”

“Now, Raylan, I would much like if you would leave your sinful life and come live with us, re-born in our merciful Savior.” Boyd has a big smile and his arms open, and Raylan thinks many men could do stupid things over that smile, dreaming about a Jesus that’ll talk in Boyd’s voice.

“I don’t think that would be a wise move on such a new church.”

“And why is that?”

“’Cause there ain’t no way this would end well. If I don’t come, then you can keep preaching in peace, but my immortal soul will be forever condemned. If I do come, then we can tell with reasonable certain that I’ll always be a temptation in your righteous journey, as you’d be in mine. So then we’d both be lost, and what good could come from that?”

Boyd smiles, as if Raylan has giving him an unexpected gift. He answers, clearly without believing a word of what he’s saying:

“We should just part ways them: you stick to your sin and I’ll stick to my faith.”

“Best decision to make, that is.” But Raylan doesn’t move, don’t start walking back to his car, he doesn’t create the distance necessary.

“You sure you alright, Raylan? You don’t look so good, if you don’t mind me saying. Anything I can do for you?”

He knows he has the remains of the last night still in his eyes – he could scrub out the whole evening of his skin, wash his hair, clean his fingernails and his sex, there’s nothing he could do about his restless eyes.

“Well, you ain’t a criminal anymore, so I don’t suppose you can kill a client for me.”

Boyd doesn’t respond to Raylan as if this was a joke, but as if he’s considering doing just that.

“Some john roughing you up?”

“Nothing I can’t deal on my own, Boyd, I don’t need your shining armor. Just some asshole from Frankfurt, Dixie Mafia little shit. In fact, I even thought they might be doing business with you, since he was quite happy he was makin’ money here in Harlan.”

Boyd was thoughtful for a while, and right there he wasn’t much of the preacher, but looked like the evil mastermind he more usually impersonates.

“Raylan, had you ever heard about a man called Robert Quarles? Blond guy, very blue eyes, white as a damn ghost? Creepy.”

“Now, Boyd, I can’t be sure, since the name doesn’t ring me bells. But one Duffy’s friend did fit the description.”

“Duffy as in Wynn Duffy?”

Shit.

“Huhmm… that’s right. He ain’t my client any longer, but I would be very thankful if you could refrain from mentioning our connection.”

Boyd was back into full Christian mode at that. “Oh, don’t you worry, my friend, I ain’t got no interest in Duffy’s sinful escapades with male escorts. God knows I shouldn’t be the one to judge him, only our merciful Lord can do that! But I gotta tell you, knowing what I know now won’t make me any more merciful, son.”

Raylan has to shake his head at that: a born-again Christian with Dixia Mafia on his hit list. He turns to go, speaking over his shoulders:

“And here was I, getting almost convinced this whole set up might be true.”

“I won’t argue you any longer on that matter, ain’t nothing I can say that’ll convince you otherwise. But hey, Raylan?” Raylan turns one last time, already pissed at Boyd.

“Did you came all the way out here just to see me?”

And isn’t that the most asshole-y question Boyd could ask?

“What do you think?”

*****

 _Nutjobs. Why always the nutjobs,_ Raylan wonders, as he tries to free his hands from the headboard.

It was a week later after his last job with Wynn Duffy, so Raylan thought he could maybe enjoy some nice, closeted john with a briefcase and a neck tie. Art was getting easy on him, since apparently after Crowder and Duffy he was the company’s equivalent of a Law and Order: SVU victim. Raylan had half a mind to get pissed at it – it wasn’t as if Boyd or Duffy had been impossible to handle or even that rough, nothing Raylan couldn’t handle. But he wasn’t going to complain about not being assigned to the next criminal asshole that came knocking, and he had enough money to enjoy a nice, slow week of answering the phone.

Of course, it meant he was spending most of those days in the officer. It also meant that if a crazy psychopath wanted to ambush him, all he had to do was wait outside until Art and Raylan came out, see as Raylan said his goodbyes and follow his car until he gets home.

And then, it would only be a matter of hitting him as he tried to open his motel room door, hitting him hard and fast on that point on his neck with, let’s say, a gun. After that it would only be darkness, no sound or movement.

That’s it, until Raylan wakes up in a dark truck, his head and neck hurting like hell, hands tied behind his back and mouth gagged, already guessing what nutjob had got him in this position.

It’s a nice thing Raylan’s not a betting man, or he would have lost the bet: when the truck finally opened, it wasn’t Wynn Duffy looking at him, but that blond friend of his. Quarles, Raylan suppose, feeling as if he was even more fucked that his earlier assumptions had lead him to believe.

Quarles takes him to another hotel, one dark and cheap enough no one sees a gagged man being dragged across the parking lot, being throw into a room.

Raylan falls and rolls into the floor, knocking every furniture on his way and hurting his wrist on the coffee table as it spills the content on the floor next to the bed. Of course, that only makes Quarles even happier: the asshole is making his great villain speech, all promises of pain and endless hell. Raylan is already pissed off he didn’t get home to drink his beer and go to bed early as he had planned, but he gets downright angry when he hears Quarles saying:

“You know, the moment I saw you, I knew it. I usually don’t do it with the ones your age, you see, I like them better when they’re young and fresh, but you have that rebellious look,” he was turning Raylan’s head his way, viciously digging his nails on his face. “yeah, that one. I just had to see it break, you know?” he says as he slaps Raylan, throwing him on the bed.

Younger ones. Raylan realizes he’ll have to kill this asshole.

Quarles strips him with the help of a knife, not bothering to avoid Raylan’s flesh. He won’t make any deep cuts right now, just let the blade scratch Raylan’s body, bringing small drops of blood to the surface. In a matter of minutes Raylan is completely naked, lying on his stomach, his hands now tied to the wooden headboard and his mouth still gagged.

As Quarles – quite conveniently, we may add – goes to the bathroom to strip or do whatever the hell rapists do before they rape, carrying the room’s keys with him, Raylan looks over the spilled drawer: he would had love to see a knife and a gun, and possibly a cellphone with 911 already dialed, but as it was he had cash, a bottle of pill – probably oxi, a Bible, a notepad, and two fucking Bic pens.

As he tried to reach for the pile with his foot, fishing with his toes, he kept trying to free himself from the ropes quietly. At last, it was clear that the ropes wouldn’t give in, but the wood of the headboard might: _if_ that worked, he would be left naked, with his hands tied, to try and free himself from a locked room with a maniac carrying a knife and, quite possibly, a gun. Or several knifes and several guns.

Great odds.

He kneels on the bed and gets ready to see it through. As he hears Quarles closing the bathroom tap, he throws his whole weight back, hoping it would be enough to break the rotten wood. With a loud crack, the headboard collapses, freeing his hands. Quarles is out the bathroom on the same second, running naked with the knife on his hand, throwing himself at Raylan’s back as the man tries to escape the bed and into the floor.

Raylan feels the knife slashing the skin around his hip, cutting deep, but he doesn’t stop trying to buck the man from him. Quarles has the better position, though – and the unbound hands – so he finally manages to turn Raylan around as he raises the knife, clearly done.

That’s when Raylan’s fingers close around the Bic pen, and as Quarles raises the knife, he buries it deep on a baby blue eye.

All sorts of things happen at the same time after that: Quarles screams, his blood and something that Raylan don’t want to figure what starts spilling all over his body, the man finally drops the knife, and Boyd Crowder comes bursting through the door, a gun in his hand.

*****

“Raylan Givens – naughty cowboy, genuine Kentucky boy, gives great head and is especially attractive if you’re a nutjob. Will do threesomes.” – that’s what should be written on his internet profile when the company finally gets around at doing a website for the Kentucky brench.

“You sure you don’t wanna go to a hospital?”

Boyd sits by his side on Raylan’s bed, a generous tumbler of Jim Beam in each hand and some painkillers between his fingers.

Raylan chased the painkiller with the Jim Beam, sure he would sleep three weeks straight. Thank God he was already on his own bed, showered and his wounds already attended. His limbs were starting to feel as heavy as lead, and his head still pounded.

“There’s no need. I’m pretty sure my anti-tetanus shot’s still okay.”

“You may need stitches.” since Raylan didn’t respond, Boyd kept going. “I thought you weren’t working with the Dixie Mafia any longer.”

“And I thought you weren’t my pimp.” Boyd was raising his hands in surrender, but before he could work out an apology, Raylan beat him. “Besides, that looked like a willing job to you?”

Boyd took a deep breath, as if controlling the anger. No point in being angry, since Quarles was already dead.

“I thought maybe he tied you up after you came to his motel room.”

“No, the son of a bitch jumped me as I was gettin’ here. I must be old, Boyd, if I let a yankee knock me down that way.”

“Oh, darlin’, you don’t look a day over forty.” Boyd said with a smile, and got himself a punch in the shoulder for it, even if Raylan couldn’t muster the strength to hit him as hard as he deserved.

“You gonna tell me what the hell were you doing outside Quarles door with five tugs and a tied up Wynn Duffy?”

Boyd sighed, but Raylan wasn’t going to back off. No one was more tired than him, and that shit had been the perfect fucked up ending to a night full of bullshit. Besides, he was lying naked with a man stabbed in the eye over him, when Boyd came in with his gang of religious freaks and a bloodied Duffy: you’ll agree the situation was awkward as hell.

“Those men were bringing poison to our home, Raylan, exploiting our people to their own devilish purposes. Now, what kind of Christian would I be if I saw those bad deeds happening ‘round my home and did nothin’ to stop the evil growin’ on my land?”

“So you went to put the fear of God on Wynn Duffy.”

“Well, my friend, that was certainly a good part of it, and the Lord is my witness that I was more than happy to serve as God’s sword over that sinner, but I’m afraid that wasn’t our main goal. Now, we know Wynn Duffy is an evil man, but he ain’t the head of the snake.”

“Quarles is.”

“Quarles was, before you took care of him. We managed to make Duffy talk about where Quarles was hiding, and when we got there we could see he had company. Since killing innocent bystanders was never my intention, I told my men we should wait ‘till the night’s festivities were over. I could never imagine it was you there, or that he was keeping anyone captive.”

Well, that Bic pen surely was a miracle, then – the night’s festivities would probably end with Raylan bleeding out on the bath, or worst.

“You sure your men won’t talk?”

Raylan knew damn well he was in debt with Boyd right now – by making Quarles body disappear, he certainly avoided Raylan’s whole life being investigated, the whole head ache of statements and trials. Besides, there was a fifty / fifty chance the police was going to believe the hooker was about to get raped and that the kill was self-defense, and not a job that went wrong. Raylan knew that even if that whole mess was Quarles fault he could end up in jail anyway, since this was Kentucky and he was a male prostitute.

That being said, Boyd was the one to get him out of that bed, untie his hands, cover his body, clean Quarles blood from his skin. He was the one that brought him home and attended to his injuries. Raylan is certainly glad that, in the end, he didn’t need saving, that he wasn’t another broken hooker waiting for salvation, that he could take care of himself. But he can’t deny that having Boyd beside him on those minutes where he still didn’t knew what the hell had happened was comforting.

He had killed a man that night.

“My boys ain’t gonna talk, Raylan, they are moved by true faith and they would never betray a word given to their preacher.” at Raylan’s skeptical look, Boyd added. “Besides, if they ever feel the need to unburden their souls by talkin’ about Quarles’ death, I’ll take the fall. I was going to kill him anyway, you just saved me some time.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

Boyd stared at Raylan for a long time, lips parted, as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t quite certain which words to use. Raylan was amazed: a Boyd without words was such a rare event, it was a naked, raw Boyd, huge eyes searching the night ahead. Like a king without a crown or a samurai without a sword.

Like a gunslinger without a gun, or even a gun without a bullet. Like a Christian without love or a miner under the sun.

“Raylan, you won’t ever believe I’m speaking the true when I talk about God. You don’t believe I could be saved, not after everythin’ I’ve done. Yes, I’ve done plenty and so did you – if we’ve sinned, Raylan, or just survived, I can not tell. What I can tell, is that one day our pats crossed again, after twenty years apart. You may think that sharing a bed together, sharing a… a sin, was just another night in your line of work, just another john, that our meet wasn’t different just ‘cause we were friends twenty years ago. But you see, I have this belief, this conviction, that our meeting wasn’t just an accident, and the fact that we were friends, that that played a part… When you kissed me that night, Raylan, something changed inside of me. I was angry, I was so angry at you, and I was also in a pain that I couldn’t quite understand. I started cursing the day we lied side by side, until the night I woke up and I knew why we had to do it. As I was laying there in pain, in awful pain, I understood that it was somethin’ deeper than just the frustration of not having you for myself, it was a pain from my very soul. And I realized: well, I couldn’t any more blame you for my situation in life than a farmer could blame his neighbor for a storm.”

Finally, Raylan found his voice:

“A storm being an act of God?”

“That’s right, Raylan.”

“Me fucking you was an act of God?”

“Well, God was acting through you, Raylan. To get my attention, to set me on a new course. Now I know not yet what his will for me is, but I have faith, I have faith that the pat will be illuminated before me as I need it to be. For even through all this, I am at peace, for I am born again at the eyes of the Lord, Raylan. And I want to thank you for playing your part.” Boyd smiled one more time, and touched Raylan’s hand: a small, tender touch, fingertips against Raylan’s skin. “Now you must excuse me, since I understand that you have to tend to the needs of the flesh. Sleep now, Raylan.”

He was out the door before Raylan could react. Later, Raylan will blame the drink and the painkiller and the whole surreal night he had lived; but in that second, in that fleeting touch that didn’t last more than a moment, he could feel Boyd finally reaching him, in a way he couldn’t do on that night in Bowman’s house. Laying on his bed, Raylan could feel the pain – _awful pain_ – of his injures and the cold from the night, but he could also feel the touch of his best friend Boyd, as he held his hand in the darkest mine.

**Author's Note:**

> So, was it too lame? You wanna scream at me, I'm at ohthati.tumblr.com , as usual. Hope ya'll have a nice Sunday!


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